London Flamenco Festival

I've seen various shows at the London Flamenco Festival over this last week. Most of them were sooooo crap! Basically I paid my money to see... people standing around looking arty... or walking slowly across the stage and back again (looking arty)... or getting dressed and undressed on stage... women cuddling shoes... shoes falling from the ceiling... and a grand finale combination of all of the above - a woman walking slowly and artily across the stage whilst pouring sand out of numerous shoes!!! This was flamenco??!! This afternoon was the last show, and thank goodness Charles had booked tickets for this one as it saved the week! This was Aire de Jerez - a group of children from Jerez performing flamenco - and this was the proper stuff, lots of passionate stamping and clicking, very clever and fast and amazing to look at. My god they were fantastic, and only aged about 12! They had such passion and such poise! They really showed up the adults' shows for the arty-farty crap that they were.

Charles has written a letter to complain about the festival this year, and I think I will do the same. One of the shows only lasted about an hour and we paid £38 a ticket for that!! It should have been half price for being half a show!

I've given Charles my TV to look after. Drastic! I'm trying to be more productive and I just find I spend all my time looking at the TV and flicking channels to see what's on, it's not getting much done. I feel a bit lost without it though, it's scary! A friend from tango, Khristos, sent me an encouraging email saying he thinks that it's a good thing to do as he doesn't have a TV and, once I get over my initial lost feeling, I will become less passive and more productive and will feel very satisfied with my life. I hope so!! (If you live in the Richmond area and see a miserable face peering in your window one evening this week it's only me trying to see your telly!)